Characterization of the TeNT model of occipital cortical epilepsy in rats. (A) The onset of seizures after surgery was between 3 and 7 days, with most starting around 4 days post-injection of TeNT. (B) Left: daily seizure frequency (mean±s.e.m.) during the whole recording period from the onset of first seizure (time point 0). Right: the box-and-whisker graph shows the mean (red cross) and the median of % of weekly seizure frequency. (C) Total number of seizures (left panel) and the corresponding cumulative % distribution for individual animals (coloured dotted lines; right panel). The black line represents the mean of the values. (D) The average of median of seizure duration from the onset of first seizure (time point 0). Data are presented as mean±s.e.m. (n=10 Sprague Dawley rats).

Behavioural manifestations of seizures. (A) Semiology classification of seizures and the distribution of seizure duration (n=102 seizures from eight animals). ‘Unknown’ indicates periods when the behaviours were not visible because the animals were beneath the environmental enrichment material or video signals were interrupted. All rats showed multiple types of seizures from non-motor focal seizures to focal onset with or without secondary generalisation. (B) Histogram of seizure duration from ten animals over the whole recording period. Right: the frequency was normalised to the total seizures of individual animals.

Predictions on the number of seizures. (A) The plot of Pearson correlation coefficients and Gaussian process modelling of the relation between the log number of seizures (sz) in the first week after onset of seizures and the number of seizures in the remaining recording days. Black lines represent the posterior Gaussian distribution (mean±one, and two s.d.). Red lines delimit a target interval of the number of seizures (left panel: from 20 to 100; right panel: from 20 to 200) in the remaining days and green lines delimit the interval for which there is more than 50% chance of observing such number of seizures (left panel: from 12 to 17; right panel: from 11 to 26) (n=10 animals). (B) Same as A, but with the axes exponentially transformed. (C) Probability that the number of seizures in the remaining days fall within the target interval of 20 to 100 (left panel) or 20 to 200 (right panel). Green lines delimit the interval above the 50% threshold mark (red line).

The Szewczyk and Vampalli groups demonstrate that dystrophin-deficient C. elegans recapitulates the key phenotypic features of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and show that these mutant worms are suitable for candidate drug screening. Find out more about the story behind the paper in the first-author interview with Jennifer Hewitt.

“When I take on someone in my own lab, the very first time I sit down with them I tell them I'm not expecting their experiments to work”

In this interview, Luke O’Neill, professor of biochemistry in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College Dublin, talks about the necessary collaboration between immunologists and cancer scientists, inflammaging, and his rock-star alter-ego as frontman of The Metabollix.

Kathryn Hentges and team used computer-based machine learning methodology to predict which genes in the mouse genome are essential for development. Here they present a database of mouse essential and non-essential genes.

The nervous system's exposure to hypoxia has developmental and clinical relevance. In this Review, Joshua Bonkowsky and Jong-Hyun Son discuss the effects of hypoxia on the development of the CNS, and its long-term behavioral and neurodevelopmental consequences.

We invite you to submit original research for a Special Collection focused on neuromuscular disease models, edited by Annemieke Aartsma-Rus, James Dowling and Maaike van Putten. The collection will showcase studies on the dysregulation of pathways, disease progression, approaches to treat and modify disease course in animal models, technologies for studying muscle pathophysiology and regeneration, and advances in the development of suitable in vitro and in vivo models. Submission deadline: 3 June 2019.

Did you know graduate students and post-doctoral researchers wishing to make collaborative visits to other laboratories can apply for a DMM Travelling Fellowship of up to £2500? Elizabeth Rhea, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington, USA, travelled to Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Read her experience of working on a method to use the buccal mucosa as a model for screening enhancers of intranasal insulin delivery.

DMM aims to promote human health by encouraging collaboration between basic and clinical researchers, covering a diverse range of diseases, approaches and models. Our Editors are all active researchers in the field – your peers, colleagues and mentors, who know how much work has gone into every paper. DMM offers format-free submission and accepts peer review reports from other journals, making submission as easy as possible for our authors. Send us your next great paper – publish with us and you'll be in good company.

A single transformed cell can be detected and squeezed out of epithelial tissue by its healthy neighbours. William Hillhighlights a preprint in which the authors investigate the fate of KRas-transformed cells surrounded by normal neighbours in zebrafish and their role in tumourigenesis.